McLaren looks strong but it's another open race

Mark Hughes was trackside in Monaco during Thursday practice and reckons that McLaren may be in the pound seats this weekend, but warns that nothing is certain ahead of another wide open 2012 encounter

With only the briefest of dry-running windows on Thursday afternoon in what is normally the most revealing of the practice sessions, making any sort of call on the likely competitive shape of the weekend is fraught with hazard. But we can probably say that none of the usual frontrunning teams – McLaren, Red Bull, Lotus – seems to be suffering from the heat degradation of the tyres that caused such a jumble of the order in Spain two weeks ago.

That said, Ferrari, Williams and Sauber – the three over-delivering cars of Barcelona – do look the strongest threat.